Mike Parnell: We have a solar power client. Tey are booked out until 2025 doing transformer rehab and turbine units. Tey are getting orders from a lot of the power companies. When people are projecting 10, 12, 15 years downstream, that is a bit unusual for the U.S.
Brad Benner: Tere is a lot of foreign investment that is coming into the US. Te Chinese are starting to build crane- manufacturing plants. Korean and European companies are setting up locations. What excites me is that Americans can be making things again and supplying the world. We certainly have the resources to do that.
Wire Rope Exchange: I want to shift our focus to things that can be transformative to the industry. How do you look ahead and assess how to adapt your business to the changes that are coming?
have to manufacture it in space and send it down to earth. Tere is going to be a lot of innovation as a result of that.
Mike Parnell: You’re just planning on business death if you won’t lift your head up out of the sand long enough to look around and listen and do some research. You have to stay plugged in. Listen and learn. It’s about actively pursuing all kinds of ideas, crazy as some may be, so that if something starts to take off, it may take a turn that you or I can actually fill a need.
Tom Miller: Some of the carbon fiber and incredibly strong and durable materials that are being used on aircraft today is amazing. Tings that are available today such as the carbon fiber relic with strength that eclipses steel is what is going to move us forward.
Wire Rope Exchange: Open innovation and crowd sourcing are getting a lot of
“If you have management or leadership that really inhibits or prohibits failure of any type, the writing is on the wall that they are not going to be innovative in what they are doing. We need to be willing to fail because each failure will teach us and tell us something about where we need to go.”
~ Mike Parnell, President, Industrial Training International
Brad Benner: NASA is working on a space elevator. It is going to use a cable that connects a geosynchronous orbited station in space to earth. Tere will be capsules that go up and down on it. Tey are going to do this with carbon fibers. I think there is going to be more of a synthesis between synthetic products and traditional steel products and electronics so that we move towards hybrid products that we don’t even imagine right now, but really aren’t that far off. I think this tether cable from space to earth is going to be a phenomenal accomplishment. Tey are actually going to
24 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2012 WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
attention. How do you see these concepts being applied in our industry?
Mike Parnell: Tis industry does not mimic the electronic world. Because the world is getting smaller, competitive perspectives drive people to be secretive – and not willing to share. Te future and total existence of their organization may rest on their findings and the development of their innovations. It is only after things get adopted out in the market place and are well established that we see cross- pollination – like a product initially used in undersea lifting may now be used
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